


Fragility

by sleepmussedhair



Category: Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, BAMF Beth, BAMF Daryl, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Romance, Sexual Tension, Survival, Swearing, bethyl
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-27
Updated: 2014-05-05
Packaged: 2018-01-20 22:43:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1528403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sleepmussedhair/pseuds/sleepmussedhair
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Canon Divergence from the end of 'Alone'. Spoilers for S.04. Beth and Daryl are reunited after their separation at the mortuary, but still not out of harm's way. When Daryl is grievously injured, Beth realizes it's up to her to fight for their safety - and both she and Daryl realize how fragile their new position is. Beth borrows a concept from Joe, and Daryl reminds her this isn't a democracy. 'M' for eventual sexual content.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story follows the show up until the end of 'Alone', then merrily does whatever it wants. The first two chapters will be recounting 'Alone' from Daryl and Beth's perspectives, and then new content from that point on.  
> Daryl reflects on the first time he fell in love - and why it's for stupid sonsabitches, so he ain't doin' it again.

Once upon a time, when he was hovering on the edge of being a teen (all knees and elbows and hair that was always in his eyes, until his momma took the clippers to them in disgust), Daryl Dixon had fallen in love for the first time.

She was a fresh-off-the-cob English teacher, young and pretty, and ready to change the world.

She did volunteer work with the school outreach program that was always nosing around the Dixon boys (well, mostly Daryl, by that time Merle had been long dropped out of school, and besides that, Merle was prone to telling anyone who poked around and asked him about his life at home with his daddy where they could stick their questions) and she was always trying to draw Daryl into after school programs, or trying to get him to come to the Smiles & Breakfast program she helped run three days a week before class. 

Guess he looked scrawny enough that she thought he was one of them kids whose parents never fed 'em enough. But Daryl was already well-versed in Merle's School of Helping Yourself, so if Eggo's weren't on momma's priority list Monday morning before he left for school, Daryl stopped by the Qwik-Mart on Second Street and helped himself to some Slim Jims or an Oh Henry and life was good.

But this English teacher (her name was Ms. Matthews or Ms. Matheson or some shit, but it was always, "Call me Mary" because she was one of those teachers who thought if you called 'em by their first name, that made them cool or some shit, and you'd connect on some bullshit deep level and tell 'em how your daddy hit you for picking through his butt can last weekend and it still hurt to sleep on your side 'cause your ribs were black and blue), she was young and petite, with big brown eyes and long brown hair that always swung back and forth over her pert little ass when she walked. So Daryl let her try and inspire him and counsel him and talk to him about shit, because when she thought she was getting through to him, she often leaned over, and he could see the curve of her pale cleavage on a good day. 

She also liked to lend him little books of poems, all dog-eared so you knew she loved 'em, that had weird-ass poems that didn't rhyme but were written all weird.  
Like; 

Crossing a bridge is a matter  
of putting one foot in front of the other  
.Even  
..if  
...your  
....feet  
.....falter  
you'll soon hit grass again

Or some bullshit like that. 

And then the next day she'd catch him laying on the grass outside the old willow by the janitor's shed, chewing on a piece of long grass at lunch, and she'd ask him what he thought of this poem, or that one. She would go on and on about how beautifully some old dead dude had described the fragility of rain hitting a tin roof, or wind curling a leaf in the breeze, and he'd nod sometimes and try and get through with grunts and "yeahs" until she just shut the hell up. 

But she was real pretty, and she smelled like lilac and vanilla, and Daryl was just learning to accept the fact that he was going to spend the rest of his life getting a boner every time the wind blew the right way now. 

Well that romance pretty much up and died the first time Daryl used the word "fragility" in a sentence to point out a cobweb that was all wet with dew and stretched between two close pines to Merle one morning, when they went out before the moon and sun had swapped shifts, to see if they could bag momma some rabbits so she could get them through 'til next time she saw a little grocery money from the old man. Merle about pissed his pants guffawing and repeating the word with various levels of mockery, and then he had shoved Daryl into the same cobweb for being a "prissy bitch". 

The next day when Ms. "Call me Mary" had tried to give him a creased anthology of short stories, he'd told her to "go fuck yourself and your stupid books, ma'am" and then left school for two days to camp out in the woods with Merle and drink a bottle of Knob Creek whiskey Kenny Sawyer had stolen off his older brother (and spent an entire day puking until his ears rang). 

Point being; falling in love made you a dumb sonovabitch, and just 'cause some chick had you all hot in the Fruit of the Looms, didn't mean you had any right thinkin' you had a shot. It made you act different, it messed you up, and in his case; it made you think you could be someone different. Maybe you could be smarter, or better, or could do something with your life. 

But he was a Dixon. He was a degenerate. He was Merle's little brother, his shadow. He was the son of a wife-beater, a moonshiner and a mean drunk. He wasn't anybody. He sure as hell wasn't gonna be no university graduate, or the type of kid stayed after school to talk to his pretty young English teacher about poetry. 

Daryl had stuck to girls his own pay grade after that. His own level. Hell, the first girl he'd gotten any under the shirt action from was that following summer. And she was five years older than him, and did it for a rolled cigarette and a quarter for the payphone so she could call her older brother at the prison two counties over. 

Daryl quit falling in love and settled for what was available and what he could catch tagging cross-country with Merle. He was lucky, some women had a thing for rednecks with a ninth-grade education and their very own couch to sleep on that night, and it wasn't like he was hard up for it, but he wasn't exactly bringing home the kind of girls you introduce to your momma, neither. 

Not that his momma was alive long enough for him to bring home any girls to, anyways. 

Then the world fell to shit (or more to shit, whatever) and there were both less options, and less Friday nights at a pool hall catching the eye of the box-dye red head with the denim cut-offs at the bar. 

And then he started caring about the people he was with, and how do you sleep with someone when it was likely they'd end up dead, or turned and trying to chew your face off? 

Besides, none of these girls were the kind of girls he could get into a bottle of cheap gin, have drunken sex with, and bail on the next day ('Cause Merle and he were heading on anyways). 

They were... They were Carol and Maggie, they were Sasha and Beth and... They were friends. They were people he fought alongside. They were people he trusted to watch his back while he slept, or went on a run, or took a piss. They were people he respected and actually gave a damn about, as much as he had struggled in the beginning to remain separate and unattached. 

Sure, some of the women in the group were attractive. Hell, there were damn few he could say he wouldn't take a good long think on if they ever propositioned him, but Daryl didn't do that. Sleep with people he actually knew, and respected, and had to make eye contact with over his canned refried beans at dinner, that is. 

It was just how he had gone through life. 

So yeah, maybe every once and awhile he got a little crabby because he was getting a little hot under the collar, and yeah, maybe it was frustrating as hell trying to get a little alone time to quickly jerk off in a group that wasn't big on going off on your own, but it was a damn sight easier than trying to avoid getting into a messy situation where feelings got hurt or people felt used or whatever. 

Love was messed up. He saw Maggie and Glenn get all tangled up in each other, and he kind of envied them that, that they could do that in this world, and he also felt like he should give them a wide berth. In case that shit was catching. 

Because in the end, it wasn't going to end well. Nothing in this world did anymore. If anything, it just made you vulnerable. It gave you something to lose, and that made you... Fragile. 

Daryl had learned that the first time around. When the world wasn't on fire and filled with walkers and dicks who wanted what you had, just 'cause it looked good from the other side of the fence. 

And that damn word rang through his head a lot more these days. That damn English teacher had imprinted the word on his brain, like a brand. It had flashed through his head like a lightning strike that night with Beth, in the trailer that coulda been the dirtshack he had grown up in, after they had both gotten shit-faced on moonshine (and he'd made a dick out of himself. Like usual.) and Beth had given him a slow-burning, mischievous smile in the light of the moon and suggested they burn the place to the ground. 

The thought wasn't about Beth. She wasn't fragile. None of his group had been, at the end, because they couldn't be anymore. Everyone had to change, and adapt, to survive this long. Beth was strong now, hammered and beaten into shape by loss, and horror, like a blacksmith taking a hammer to a blade to make it sharp and durable. 

But the thing between them, this friendship, this sharing and talking and grieving, and depending on each other shit? That was _fragile_. 

Merle woulda laughed his ass off if he had seen Daryl trying to pull his eyes off the light of the fire flickering on Beth's face while she swayed gently on her feet, mesmerized and drunk. He woulda taken Daryl to the ground and beat him black and blue if he'd seen Daryl crying like a bitch while Beth clung to his back and tried to hold him together, to hold them together, after he had hurled abuse at her about slitting her wrist for attention, and Daryl probably would have let Merle do it. 

Shit, he deserved it. For what he had said, for crying like a big girl, for looking at Beth like--- 

Like he had any right to. 

Beth was just a kid. Maybe she was prettier than she had any right to be, covered in walker guts (and when was the last time either of them had showered or seen a bar of Irish Spring soap?), and half lit. And maybe she was smarter than any seventeen year old he knew (and him for damn sure). And maybe she was more grown up than he had been at that age (or now for that matter)-- She was still like half his age, and even if that wasn't a fact, she was too good for him. 

Laying in the coffin at the funeral home, listening to Beth play the piano and sing some bittersweet thing (and scared to move or clear his throat or do anything that would break the sweetness of the moment, that would make Beth stop singing because she was self-conscious), Daryl felt one incredibly tenuous moment of peace. He was comfortable (and no lie, that coffin was the softest thing he'd laid his ass on in ages), and he wasn't hungry, or dead on his feet from running and fighting his way through hordes of walkers, or trying to hear his own thoughts over the sound of his heart thundering in his own ears because his body was at the limit of instinct and terror and exhaustion, and Beth had the sweetest lilt when she sang... He was nearly lulled to sleep by the tranquility of it all, and that was what startled him back to himself. Back to reality. 

Because there was no peace. And this moment, it couldn't be forever. Any second a group of walkers could come banging at the windows because the sound of the piano attracted them. Or survivors from the Governor's group could stumble on their little safe house looking for some walls for the night and start another shitstorm of bullets. Anything could happen. Like at the prison. 

And Daryl knew that with a certainty that felt like ice water had been dumped in his veins. It made him cold down to his bones with clarity. He had gotten complacent at the prison. He had let his guard down. And Beth had lost Hershel, had lost her _daddy_ because he had let himself be lulled. 

So Daryl had bent his knees and planted his feet so he could get to his feet quickly, if he needed to. And he had let his hand rest on his knife handle; and he didn't let himself get too comfortable. 

But he hadn't stopped Beth from playing. 

And he didn't take his eyes off her hair gently swinging across the nape of her neck from her ponytail every time she moved her head to change the position of her fingers on the keys neither. 

Because maybe that moment had been fragile, but it had also been the first time he had seen the tension ease out of Beth's shoulders. 

And that was worth a bit of agonizing on Daryl's part. 

Maybe he couldn't have peace. Maybe Daryl couldn't relax, or let his guard down, but maybe Beth could. 

He could watch for both of them.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Canon Divergence from the end of 'Alone'. Spoilers for S.04. Beth and Daryl are reunited after their separation at the mortuary, but still not out of harm's way. When Daryl is grievously injured, Beth realizes it's up to her to fight for their safety - and both she and Daryl realize how fragile their new position is. Beth borrows a concept from Joe, and Daryl reminds her this isn't a democracy. 'M' for eventual sexual content.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The lead up to being separated from Daryl in 'Alone' from Beth's POV. 
> 
> In which Beth just wanted to play house and Daryl isn't allowed to name the dog.

Beth feels like she's smiled so much in the last day or so at the mortuary that her cheeks might crack and break right off her face, she's so out of practice. It feels good though.

Daryl's talking staying, talking making this place home, even just for a bit, and that should be ridiculous comin' outta his mouth after the prison, after they lost _everything_ \-- but it doesn't.

There's a humming in her ears, and a slow burning warmth in her belly, at the idea, and her mind almost short circuits in excitement trying to run through what it could be like. 

It should be ridiculous to think of shoring up, of getting homey and domestic, with Daryl Dixon. 

The words "domestic" and "Daryl" should probably never be said in the same sentence together, without running the risk of spontaneously combustin'. But her belly is still burning with happy warmth, and her cheeks are still sore from smiling, and they could do it, couldn't they? 

They could stay here for a bit. Eat redneck brunch on the porch while the sun was shinin', and she could play Daryl some piano at night and see how long it took for the tension to leak out from his stiff bent knees and the lines of his shoulders. Maybe they could even get that dog inside, if it hadn't gone feral from being all on its own, and they could train it to stay nearby and give it a name (Daryl's suggestions only being considered so long as they were appropriate) and oh--- It wouldn't be forever. She knew they couldn't stay forever. They had to look for the others, they had to find the ones that had made it out. 

And some had made it out. Beth was holding onto this. Not because she was naive, or stupid, or in denial. But because whatever Daryl said, she knew that her having hope was important to _him_ now. 

Maybe Daryl was stronger than her in a lot of ways. But somewhere in the time since they had burnt down the moonshine shack, she had realized that Daryl needed things from her just as desperately as she needed things from him. He needed her to keep on hopin'. To keep believing there were good people in the world, and that there were still some of her people in the world, and to babble on about silly things neither of them really cared about as they went through their days. 

The thing about Daryl was that everything he did was for someone else. For Merle. For Rick. For Sophia. For Carol. For her daddy. 

For her. But now, she thought a part of Daryl had changed. Had developed a need to be _needed_. 

And that was why he was able to carry on, and carry through, and keep going. He was kind of a big momma hen that way. 

Daryl needed Beth to keep on hopin' and believin' because he was so close to the edge of giving up on believing anything could be okay, ever again, that she thought she maybe kept him from tumbling off the edge. 

Maybe he couldn't believe that anyone survived. But because she did, it soothed some of the bleakness in his soul. 

So he would let her convince him to go out on runs, to look for signs of the others, and it probably wouldn't be very hard. And maybe they'd have to leave this place for good in a week, or two, or whenever. But the very fact that they were considering it, and the fact that it wasn't completely ridiculous to think of cautiously hanging their caps here for more than a night, well, that was kind of hopeful too, wasn't it?

Beth felt her lips twitch again, and she gave a contented sigh and when she heard the sound of a dog fussin' at the door, she felt a happy flutter in her belly. 

Daryl was fishing a briny pig's foot out of the jar to bait the dog with, and Beth was smiling at him and hopefully tapping her jammy fingers on the table. 

"I'ma see if I can get that dog inside this time," he huffed at her and headed for the front door, and she coulda swore he had the beginnings of a smile playing on his face. 

It's not even a minute before Daryl is yelling her name, and she knows right away by the urgency in it, by the strain in it, that things have gone bad.

He's bracing the door with his back and yelling at her to run, to meet him at the road, to get out, and she's struck for a moment with the urge to just sit down on the ground and cover her face. It's a brief exercise in falling apart, and Beth pushes it away, tries to convince Daryl to let her stay with him, but she sees the distraction she will be to him with her bum ankle, and it's written all over his face how badly he needs her safe and out of harm's way, so she blinks the hot sting out of her eyes and takes off in an awkward hobbling run. 

There are crashing waves of wrongness hitting her with every footstep that carries her away from Daryl. Her heart is a staccato beat of "Daryl, Daryl, Daryl" in her head, and she has to consciously fight the urge to run back for him at every moment. She's out on the grass, dragging her bad foot with ever decreasing patience for the injury, when she has to stop and struggle with her first walker. 

He's literally a bag of bones, probably pretty old and emaciated before he turned, and when he wraps his fingers around her shoulder and shoves his ugly face in close to hers and snaps at her, she is grateful for the fact that he feels like he's made of chicken bones and leather. It doesn't take much to shove him back out of her space to get enough room to swing her knife up, around and _in_. Her blade sinks in through his right temple with a sound like dry kindling cracking, and then she's shoving him to the ground and trying to push past him before there's time for the next one to get at her. 

She's wiping her blade off on her shirt front without thinking, like Daryl would, and toeing the edge of the line where the yard meets the road to wait for Daryl, and her heart is so loud in her ears that she doesn't even hear the sound of tires crunching through gravel at first. She's too busy eyeing up the two walkers that are shambling toward her at a diagonal, maybe twenty yards away. 

These two are more worrisome than the old zombie she just dispatched. They aren't geriatric, and she's worried about more coming while she tries to deal with these ones, 'cause they like to surprise you like that, and Beth's mouth is already painfully dry with fear. 

She hesitates for a beat, then drops her bag and starts hobbling forward, because waiting for them to reach her just isn't an option at this point. Running isn't either, because that will put more ground between her and Daryl. 

Beth tries to hit the walker closest to her from the side, to get her down and dealt with before attempting the second, but she misjudges her blade thrust and when the walker lunges for her, the blade lodges in the walker's protruding cheekbone and gets stuck with a sickening screech of metal on bone. Beth curses and tries to pull it loose, but the walker just goes with the movement and grabs a clawed handful of Beth's hair and she has to let go of the knife handle to use both hands to hold that snapping mouthful of decaying teeth away from her face and throat. 

The second walker is already reaching over his companion's shoulder to try and snatch and claw at Beth and her mouth is letting loose a volley of hissed curses that would probably make Daryl proud as she stumbles back a couple of steps, trying to pull her hair free and wincing as her scalp burns as blonde hair is ripped free in handfuls. 

"Get off of me!" Beth hisses and manages to slam her one palm in an open fist into the walker's sharp chin with enough force to send her head snapping back with a sickening crunch that probably means she broke its neck. But it only gives her a second's reprieve and then the walker swings her disjointed head back down and just misses catching Beth's flailing hand in her teeth. 

There is a loud noise, like a door opening or closing, but Beth can't afford to look away from the walker snarling in her face, so she just ignores the sound. 

Beth snatches at the handle of her knife again and gives it a yank with as much force as she can muster, but when it actually slides free she is surprised enough that it is her own momentum that rocks her back on her injured foot, and the answering red bolt of pain up her leg is enough to make her legs give. And then she is falling ass over tea kettle with two flailing walkers falling right with her before she can even muster a squeak. 

She hits the ground butt first, almost in a sitting position, but the walkers falling over themselves to get at her slam into her a second later and hit her with enough dead weight to knock the wind right out of her. Her head slams into something hard buried in the grass-- a large stone, maybe. There is a sickening streak of pain and for a moment Beth sees red, then black, fading into grey. 

Instinctively, and totally blind, Beth manages to catch the chin of the female walker before she gets her teeth into Beth's throat, but holding her is like trying to keep a rabid wolf from your throat, and she keeps having to swing her face from side to side to avoid her face getting bit. She can feel her head swimming with a frightening dizziness, but her vision is coming back in fits and starts, so at least she probably isn't going to pass out in the next few seconds. 

The walker now laying on top of Beth and the female she is immediately struggling with keeps clawing at Beth's head and shoulder over the walker he has pinned between himself and Beth, and her only saving grace is his hand is missing at the wrist and he can't grip at her with his stump, but the weight of the two of them is definitely too heavy for Beth to pull herself free. 

Her arms are burning and shaking from exertion trying to hold the walker's gnashing mouth away from her face, and Beth is worried they are about to give on her when suddenly the walker on top of their pile slumps over, _officially_ dead weight, with the very tip of a knife protruding from its right eye socket, and she can feel it when its weight is suddenly hauled off. Even if she can't see it for the walker still snarling and drooling clotted, viscous black blood all over her face. 

Then someone grabs the walker and hauls it backward and punches a blade through the base of its chin and up into its brainpan with a wet crunch and the walkers mouth stops snapping at her. The weight pinning her to the grass disappears as the walker is pulled off of her and shoved aside. 

Beth is still grey at the sides of her vision and too relieved to do anything but smile and think _"Daryl!"_ with happy relief, until a face that she doesn't recognize is peering at her with a frown and sliding over her searching to see if she was bit. 

She blinks confusedly at the sight of someone other than Daryl and so she doesn't struggle when the tall man with close-cropped brown hair says "C'mon, get up, we gotta get out," and grips her hands to pull her to her feet. Her head protests the sudden move, however, and violently. 

Beth feels herself swaying dangerously and her thoughts get muddy for a second, and the stranger has to grab her shoulders to keep her from falling over. She can vaguely hear him speaking to her, but her ears are ringing and she can't make the words out over her head  
swimming. 

A second later and she's closer to conscious than not, and she can feel the man tugging at her shoulders, trying to get her moving away from the house. 

"Come on! The car! The car!" he's hollering at her, trying to convince her to move, and Beth is confused. 

"Let's _go_ girl! The house is gone. Oh god, the house is gone." 

She feels a throb of panic at that and swings her face back to look at the house, and she can see walkers coming at it from the sides now, and through the one window she can see milling shapes, and knows its overrun. There are already a group of them pulling away from the horde and heading their way. Her legs waver again, and she feels like she might vomit. 

When the man grabs her arm and begins to bodily pull her toward the black hearse idling in the driveway she failed to notice before, Beth feels a note of panic strum through her like a guitar string and she tries to pull her arm loose. 

"No! Daryl! I have to find Daryl!" 

The man gives an exasperated groan and fixes her with a look of pity mixed with impatience. "Daryl? Who's Daryl?" 

Something quivers in her stomach at the question. "Daryl is--" _Everything. All I have left. My-- Mine. I don't know!_ "Daryl is my friend," she finally manages. 

Blue eyes catch hers and then drift back to the house with something like pain. Then fall back to her. "There is no way your friend is makin' it out of there. The house is theirs now. He's gone. We gotta go too, while we can still make it."

Beth feels something knife into her chest at his words and she has to fist her shirt over his chest to keep something from breaking outta her. "No... I have to go back for him! You don't understand!" 

_Daryl can get out. Daryl can get out of anything. He will._

The man, a bit taller than Daryl, but about the same lean build, seems to fight with himself for a minute, his feet making aborted moves both toward the car and then toward her and then stopping. He makes a brief scowl and then shoves the sleeves of his oddly formal button down white shirt up and then he is snatching at Beth, reaching to grab her at the waist. 

She hisses and dances backward. "What the _hell_ are you doing?!"

"I'm not going to hurt you, girl! But I am getting you out of here. Whether you want to go or not, I can't let a kid get themselves killed for a dead man." And even with Beth slapping at his hands, the throb in her head has dulled her reactions, and he catches her in another second and starts hauling her toward the car. She struggles like a mad thing, scratches at his hands and even tries to bite him, not realizing how like a walker she looks in that moment. The man pauses briefly with a muttered curse and then he's hauling her like a sack of potatoes and dumping her over his shoulder in a fireman carry. 

Beth manages a breathy squeak of surprise, but the sudden change in positions has the blood rushing to her head and she almost immediately feels when unconsciousness comes up like a tidal wave and crashes over her. 

She goes limp and pliant before they reach the car.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Canon Divergence from the end of 'Alone'. Spoilers for S.04. Beth and Daryl are reunited after their separation at the mortuary, but still not out of harm's way. When Daryl is grievously injured, Beth realizes it's up to her to fight for their safety - and both she and Daryl realize how fragile their new position is. Beth borrows a concept from Joe, and Daryl reminds her this isn't a democracy. 'M' for eventual sexual content.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which Daryl meets some charmin' gentlemen. 
> 
> Last Canon chapter y'all - from here on out, we diverge. 
> 
> Also, upon posting this chapter, I realized that all of my formatting got messed up on posting this chapter. I fixed it, posted it, and then realized that it had also removed some formatting from the first two chapters and I hadn't noticed. Mostly just italics, which denote thoughts, and sometimes for emphasize, but I fixed and reposted, because it really took some impact out for me. Grr, argh.

Daryl catches sight of Beth's backpack laying discarded on the ground and that's what really puts the fear of God in him.

There's something so wrong about it, and he instantly knows she ran into trouble, and he's stumbling forward, even while half terrified of what he's going to find, because there ain't nothing _else_.

But when he sees a black hearse peeling away, that's when his guts really drop out on him. He's screaming her name and chasing the car, even though it's futile as hell, and it's kind of a blessing because he can't think of nothing else but catching up to that car, of getting Beth, because that crowds all the bad thoughts out of his head.

And even when they start to sneak back in, like carrion hovering at the edge of his thoughts, they can't properly rent space in his head because his body is so insistently falling apart from exhaustion.

Daryl's chest is burning like he has never experienced. It feels like he's drowning on the inside, like his lungs are full of fluid. There has been a stitch in his left side for the last couple of miles, and he's almost become accustomed to the knife-pain of it now. His legs are trembling with every footfall, and he's gasping and panting and about to start frothing at the mouth like a spent horse.

For the last half hour he's had to give in and slow occasionally to a jog, and then to a walk, just to try and prolong the inevitable, but he's now starting to grey out and stumble, and he's so _fucking_ _pissed_. At his body for quittin' on him.

At whoever took Beth.

At _Beth_.

Two more goddamn minutes. _One_ more goddamn minute. That was all she had to wait, and he would have been at her side. She just had to hold on another goddamn minute. And he shoulda been one more minute sooner.

And just like that, all the bad thoughts were crowding in, slamming up against his skull and getting all cozy in his head. All of the missteps, all of the mistakes, and fuck if he wasn't right back at the prison, watching the Governor swing that blade all over again.  
How did he keep getting it so goddamn wrong?

He reaches a railroad track and considers how useless his chase is at this point, and it seems as good a place as any to just drop his bow and plunk his ass down on the pavement and as soon as the thought occurs to him he sits.

It's either sit or collapse at this point.

Daryl was gulping down air like a fish out of water, sucking it in like a starved man, and for a moment his mind was blissfully completely blank. He was on autopilot while his body struggled to get on even kilter again, and y'know, not drop dead of exhaustion.

He hears the men approach, but in a very distant way. A pair of well worn cowboy boots appear and stop just short of the point at which Daryl is staring at the ground, although not really seein' anything. He notices though. There's an assault rifle trained at the ground too.

 _Fuck it, I hope they just put me down_. It was a disturbingly appealing thought in that moment.

Daryl was so _tired_ , deep down to his bones, in that moment. He was exhausted, and Beth was gone, and probably three fucking towns over by now, and he had just lost the last thread of him that connected him to the world. It is kind of tempting to just start laughing. And never stop. Not funny haha, but definitely the kind of funny that this world seems to have in spades for him, lately.

He hears them, fuck, he smells 'em (unwashed bodies, cheap booze, cigarettes and hard living) and Daryl _knows_ these guys. Or he know dicks like these guys. Hell, he and Merle were these guys, once upon a time.

"Well, lookit here," drawled cowboy boots. It's enough for his men, five of 'em, to loosely circle him.

And because he knows what guys like this are capable of, even though a large part of him is voting in favour of just letting shit play out how it wants, when the denim cowboy dick reaches for his bow, Daryl swings a wild haymaker at the guy that catches him square in the nose, and rolls to his feet, pulling his bow and levelling it at the guy.

There's a tactile escalation of tension in the air and he feels how itchy five separate trigger fingers are, and he hears one of 'em say "I claim his vest, I like 'em wings", but the man whose nose Daryl bloodied begins to laugh with an edge of bat-shit crazy, and that's when Daryl actually begins to worry. It's the kind of laughter that's usually followed by a whole lotta crazy.

But then the man climbs to his feet and addresses Daryl with a queer sort of laughter in the background of his pack-a-day voice. "A bowman. I respect that," he says, wiping the blood from his nose on the back of his hand like it ain't no thing. "See, a man with a rifle, coulda been some kind of photographer, or soccer coach back in the day, but a bowman's a bowman, through and through."

"What d'ya got there, hundred and fifty pound draw weight? I'll be donkey licked if that don't fire at least three hundred feet per second. I been lookin' for a weapon like that..." his voice fades, even though he is clearly still talking, and Daryl watches his lips move but hears only the thudding of his pulse in his ears.

When Daryl hunts, and it don't matter much if it's a buck or a walker these days, he finds that everything fades and slows. In the moment before he looses his arrow, the world narrows to just the thing in front of him, to the thumpin' of his heart and the sound of his breathing. For a moment, he has perfect clarity, and something that feels a bit like peace. His thoughts come slow and easy.

He wonders if he can get an arrow in him before the others react. He is pretty sure he could get on the mouthy one behind his back, the one who wanted his vest, and turn his face to pulp with the butt of his crossbow before someone begins firing.

"You pull that trigger, these boys are gonna drop you several times over. Is that what you want?"

He must be losing his poker face, or Beth's expressiveness has rubbed off on him, 'cause Daryl is pretty sure the man in the denim can read his intentions on his face, clear as day.

"C'mon fella, suicide is stupid. Why hurt yourself when you can hurt other people?" He drawls, his lined face crinkling into a sharp grin.

There's a beat where Daryl is shifting his bow minutely in his grip, and he weighs his options out briefly. He could toe up with this group. Probably even take two or even three of them out before they tore his ass apart with bullets and bolts. But that wouldn't get him any closer to Beth. And Beth is what's important now. She's the only thing that is.

"Name's Joe," the older man tells him, still making eye contact with Daryl like they're having a friendly chat over a beer. And not at all concerned about the fact that Daryl is still following his every move with his weapon.

 _Fuck it_. He thinks again, and this seems to be his new motto. He drops his crossbow. "Daryl."

_Safety in numbers. And at least these assholes is packin'._

These dicks can be his walker decoys until he has enough steam in him again to pick up Beth's trail again. They're bodies, and that's what he needs right now. He ain't too worried about getting emotionally invested or involved with this group, so it's not like they're going to be a distraction. He can't afford those right now.

He eyes them up, making quick assessments in a handful of heartbeats. He takes in the twitchy, restless way one of the men fidgets as he stands ( _tweaker_ ) and the way one of the men lifts his chin and stares him down with a grin that bares all of his teeth and fingers that spasm and curl ( _itchin' for a fight_ ) and his eyes pause momentarily on the fat, sweaty guy with long curls who won't make eye contact. The fat man fingers something in his pocket and tries to shrink out of Daryl's gaze ( _somethin' ain't right with that one. Don't fit in_ ). The one who held a weapon on his back and called dibs on his vest is dancing back and forth on the balls of his feet, and peacocks and puffs his chest up like he's tryin' to play big dog, yet constantly lets his eyes dart back to Joe like he is searching for approval- Daryl earmarks that dude for trouble. The last man looks like just another lowlife. Each of 'em look like they ain't new to shitty circumstances, like the world as it is now.  
  
They look pretty at home in a world that's gone to shit, and they look painfully familiar to him. Don't matter that he's never laid eyes on these guys before, they could easily have been the men he and Merle ran with back in the day.

There is a hard, hot, lump in his chest that burns right underneath his sternum, as it always does when he thinks of Merle. It's a hot mess of guilt, grief, anger, love and hatred, and he buries it violently. _Now ain't the time_.

He lets the thought of Beth, and the accompanying rage toward the faceless stranger that took her, be the burn that propels him forward now. Swaps one pain out for another, and Daryl hopes like hell he can actually do something before it's too late this time.

He's collected a hell of a lot of losses so far, and each one feels like a weight on his chest. If Beth is gone, he's pretty sure that's it. He ain't got it in him to bear anymore weights. She will be the one that _breaks_ him. 


End file.
